Peru Guide

Many, many years ago, before the building of the great city of Chan Chan, or the hidden mountain temples; before the grand pyramids of the Sun and Moon, there lived a man called Chancay. 

The spirit Coniraya was at times mischievous. He even pretended to be the mighty Viracocha, who the Incas believed was the force behind all creation. But in ancient times he wandered the world in the form of a very poor Indian clothed in rags, so that men reviled him and called him a wretch.

Long ago the people of ancient Peru believed that the god Viracocha created the world and its people. This is a story told by the Tiahuanacan. It tells about the beginning of the world. In the story, Viracocha creates people from stone, a common material in the mountainous country of Peru.

Between the ranges of the towering Cordilleras, which gleam as blindingly as though the Children of the Sun had covered them with gold leaf - just as they covered the tip of that grim red Rock at Titicaca where the Sun once hid - the plateau is very wide and high, the air so rarefied that it seems scarcely breathable. Lake Titicaca ripples on an...

Francisco Pizarro, a peasant from Spain, was one of the least well-equipped conquerors in history. However, in the name of Christ, he destroyed the powerful Empire of the Incas and bestowed on Spain the richest of possessions. Pizarro also established the city of Lima in Peru thus opening the way for Spanish culture to dominate South America.

Ciro Alegría was born 1909 in Cajabamba, Peru, as the son of Spanish-Irish parents. He died in 1967. His great-grandfather Diego Lynch was an Irishman and owner of Peruvian mines. Alegria at age eighteen began work as a newspaper reporter, covering politics and government.

Abascal was born into a noble family and was a Spanish military officer and colonial administrator in America. At the age of 19, he entered the army. After serving for 20 years, they promoted him to colonel, and later in the war against France, to brigadier. In 1796 he took part in the defense of Havana against the British.

Europe’s first knowledge of Peruvian textiles was acquired following the Spanish invasion of Peru in 1532, when the conquistadores included a few fabrics in shipments of gold and silver they sent back to Spain.

The story of the origins and development of Peruvian archaeology begins with the earliest Spanish contact in 1524, and continues through the Colonial and Independence periods, leading at the close of the Early Republican period in 1900 to the emergence of the discipline of archaeology. It is to these three periods of time, spanning approximately...

Like most ancient peoples, the Incas and their contemporaries worshipped multiple gods. Yet there was an unmistakable tendency for each group to recognize a single god as supremely significant, at least so far as its own tribal fortunes were concerned.